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Wednesday, October 8, 2014

I cowered at the hooves of the eight-foot tall demon, wallowing in
the soot and debris of the apocalyptic cityscape. He frowned at me, and
his mouth formed words, but I couldn't understand him. Hoards of
translucent black cloud nightmares rose and fell through cracks in the
scarred ground, widening the fissures with each pass. They roiled around
us, cutting off light coming from a source that I couldn't identify. I
opened my mouth to scream, and one of the nightmare clouds poured in,
clogging my throat, filling my lungs with ash, and shooting burning
cinders up through my brain. I thrashed, trying to get to my feet so I
could run, but I no longer had legs.

I jerked awake,
thoroughly tangled in the space blanket, my legs numb, and looked into a
pair of amber eyes that stared back at me along the blade of a big,
scary military-type knife pointed at my throat. I swallowed hard. Boy,
had I screwed up.

"Hi," I said.

She
didn't blink. My God, she was beautiful in the pre-dawn light glowing
through the windows. No human looked that perfect. Was she real? I freed
my right hand and ever so slowly raised my index finger to the tip of
the blade while she watched. When I pressed lightly against the point,
it pricked my skin. I pulled my hand back. Blood welled from the tiny
cut. Yep, real. Shit. She'd taken me prisoner.

"We're surrounded by cops," I said. "If you stick me, I'll scream like a girl."

Ah,
crap, why'd I used that expression? She probably screamed like an
Amazon warrior. How'd she even lift a knife that big? She was such a
tiny thing. All the cops I'd met were big louts. But she had the drop on
me, and the knife was a lot more threatening than her wand thingy.

"Who
are you? Where are we? How'd I get here?" she asked. The taut muscles
around her eyes telegraphed fear, and the knife trembled in her hand.

I
rubbed my prickling wrist tattoos against my jeans and caught a whiff
of something burnt. I glanced around the kiosk. Up near the ceiling, a
trace of shapeless sooty cloud leaked out through the crack around the
door. My mouth opened, closed.

"Do you smoke?" I asked,
hoping she'd tell me she did. The cloud could have been cigarette smoke
even if it didn't smell like tobacco… purposeful cigarette smoke, on
the dark side. A hallucination. Not real.

A frown
joined her stare. Oops. I'd wandered off topic. What had she asked? Who
are you? But her team had that tracking device that reacted to me. How
could she be looking for me but not recognize me?

"I
brought you here so they wouldn't shoot you. I had to hide you while I
led him away." I gave her a tentative smile and waited for her to gush
her thanks for saving her life. Maybe she'd be so grateful, she'd tell
me about the tracking device—and point that big knife some other
direction. Then I could get away before she figured out who I was.

She
added narrowed eyes to the stare and the frown. I chewed my lower lip.
Maybe I wasn't communicating as well as I'd hoped. I felt woefully
inadequate talking to someone as lovely as her, especially someone
carrying a dangerous weapon. It could have been worse—at least I hadn't
degenerated into word salad or spoken in rhymes.

Light
bulbs talk to River Madden; God doesn't. When the homeless
schizophrenic unintentionally fractures a dimensional barrier and
accidentally steals a gym bag containing a million dollars, everyone
from the multiverse police to the local crime boss—and an eight-foot
tall demon—are after him. Can he dodge them long enough to correct his
mistakes and prevent the destruction of three separate dimensions? If he
succeeds, will the light bulbs stop singing off-key?